


thirteen beaches

by cabriesun



Series: shance support week [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Beaches, Comfort, Fluff, Homesick Lance (Voltron), M/M, Sunsets, Surprises, shiro is the best boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-16 00:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14153076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabriesun/pseuds/cabriesun
Summary: Shiro knows that Lance misses home. Before they go to bed he watches him sadly swipe through his phone, pictures of his family the only Earth-related memories he has amongst records of all their adventures as paladins of Voltron.  It hurts him deep within his core when Lance lays awake, telling him stories of his times at home before crying himself to sleep in Shiro’s arms. Listening to Lance and his worries always sobers him, reminds him that he and his teammates never asked to be whisked away to fight in an intergalactic war that they were otherwise unbeknownst to.So he tries to make it better. He tries to make it better for Lance because he loves Lance. Thepeopleperson he loves shouldn’t cry.





	thirteen beaches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starboyshiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starboyshiro/gifts).



> oh, this one is gonna hurt. this one hurt to write, and re-read.  
> day 7, the last day for SSW! it's been so much fun! the collection is now complete and the series is accessible above!
> 
> \----  
> so, this is for [haley](https://starboy-shiro.tumblr.com/). for many things, actually:  
> \- helping me with my analysis essay  
> \- being a great mod for both our events  
> \- hosting shance support week and doing a great ass job with it  
> \- being a wonderful friend :')
> 
> enjoy all the cheesy love from your fave shameful chib :)  
> \----
> 
> shout out to [miishii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleLady17/works) for beta-ing!
> 
> for day seven: _free day_  
>  [ **a surprise** or a proposal]

“And this…” Lance scrolls through his photos, hand resting comfortably on Shiro’s thigh, “is Marco, with me and my mom and my grandma. We were coming back from church, and it was really nice outside so Veronica wanted to practice taking photos. I was so tired that day, all I wanted to do was go home. That explains why I’m sulking.”  
  
“Veronica’s the only one with black hair in the family, right?”  
  
“Look at you, catching on.”  
  
He chuckles dryly, sadness dripping off his tongue. Shiro and Lance sit in the Black Paladin’s quarters, sharing his bed for what’s probably the hundredth night since they brought their relationship to life. His head, topped with brunette curls nuzzles into Shiro’s neck, providing him with the comfortable warmth he craved after rough battles like the one they had today.  
  
But the battle ended on a different note; his boyfriend was sad. To be specific, he was homesick. It was more than obvious because whenever Lance is sad, the rest of the room suffers the consequences. The lanky twenty-one-year-old had an uncontrollable temper that could certainly rival Keith’s.  
  
“They’re all beautiful,” Shiro’s Galran hand draws patterns into Lance’s soft skin, “I can’t wait to meet them and everyone else when we get back.”  
  
“ _If_ , we get back.” He retorts, biting his words and closing his phone, flipping it in his hands idly.  
  
“Lance,” The black paladin prepares himself for the backlash he might get, “we’re going to be back on Earth eventually. And I’m going to meet your _entire_ family. And we’re going to get that house near the beach that we’ve been talking about for the past month. Don’t give up. We _will_ get home.”  
  
“Shiro…”  
  
Shiro turns his attention from the phone flipping in Lance’s hands to his eyes, filling with tears.  
  
“Lance?! Lance, baby--”  
  
“I-I’m sorry,” He sighs, the moisture wettening his cheeks in the saddest manner, “I just get like this sometimes, it’s okay.”  
  
“I know darling,” Shiro’s heart aches for him, watching the usually jubilant and bright man break down before him, “you have every right to cry.”  
  
“It’s just,” Lance attempts to steady his breath, “it’s been four years since we left Earth. _Four years_ , Shiro.”  
  
He nods knowingly, glancing at the wall behind them where Lance ticked off the days since they had been whisked away by the blue lion. There were certainly more than a thousand tallies that were marked along it.  
  
“I--I turned twenty-one,” he sighs, “ _Twenty-one._ Do you know what I was gonna do for my twenty-first birthday?”  
  
“What?” Shiro smiles, knowing exactly where this story is going.  
  
“Hunk and I planned to go to Vegas for the week, maybe invite Pidge if she had lightened up by then, _which she has_. We would be on Earth, drinking our lives away for an entire week and yeah I wouldn’t remember half the weekend but I least I would’ve had a good time, you know?”  
  
He nods, allowing Lance to continue.  
  
“And I _loved_ spending my birthday in space, don’t get me wrong,” He starts to go back on his claims, “like I don’t regret _any_ of this, but it’s not like it was planned either.”  
  
“I know babe, I understand,” Shiro massages patterns into his bare hip, calming him, “it’s all valid, what you’re feeling.”  
  
“I guess I just miss home _a lot_ ,” he sighs, covering his face with his trembling hands in embarrassment. Shiro can’t miss the tears,  reaching to wipe them away as Lance’s voice quivers.  
  
“I-I’m sorry Shiro.”  
  
“It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay…” He repeats the mantra over and over again, cushioning Lance’s body as he lays them both down on his bed, turning the lights off.  
  
“I just miss Earth. I don’t wanna be selfish because _everyone_ does, but I do. And it _hurts_.”  
  
Shiro caters to lance’s comfort for the remainder of the night, holding him close and eventually lulling him to sleep with soft kisses and hushed reassurances. He’s already plotting in his mind, drawing conclusions and finding some way to help Lance get over his homesickness. He’s right; everyone misses home, but it isn’t exactly the _same_ for everyone.  
  
Pidge and Keith are _finding_ their family in space, discovering new pieces to add to their puzzles. He hadn't seen much of Hunk feeling homesick, but he also knew how much of his heart was into freeing the galaxy from the Galra. Allura and Coran? Yes, they lost their entire species, but they were moving _forward_. They had to mourn and move on, no hope of seeing Alteans again in sight.  
  
And it’s not like Shiro had much waiting for him back on Earth. It was a completely different story for Lance. He didn’t have to mourn, he _had_ family waiting for him back on Earth. A _lot_ of family, and for someone so overly family orientated it _had_ to have hurt.  
  
So as Lance fell asleep, Shiro stayed awake. He plotted until he couldn’t bear to keep his eyes open.  
  
He would find a way to make up for Lance’s tears, somehow.

 

 

_ three weeks later _

 

 

“Shiro, this blindfold is tight,” Lance whines, tugging at it with his fingers, “where are you taking me--”  
  
“Sh, sh,” Shiro laughs and pats the inside of his thigh before continuing to maneuver the controls of the Black Lion, “relax, we’re almost there. Trust me, you’ll love it.”  
  
“Promise?” He huffs, blowing his overgrown curls out of his face. Shiro reaches to ruffle them with his free hand, kissing the side of his head fondly. They had just arrived at their destination, and he could finally take the blindfold off.  
  
“Why don’t you tell me, hm?”  
  
He unties the blindfold with only two of his fingers, watching with a wide smile and rosy cheeks as Lance’s eyes adjust to the sudden bright light.  
  
“What is it--oh, _oh my god…_ ”  
  
“It took a little searching,” Shiro shifts the controls to his left as they speed by the mass waterfalls floating in the middle of their orbit, “but I managed to find a place just for you.”  
  
The darkness of space is replaced with sunny blue skies as they break into the atmosphere. The floating waterfalls are still fairly visible from the zone they’re flying in, but it’s easier to see the flow of the vertical drop, flowing into various rivers that lead to the ocean.  
  
Shiro smiles, watching as Lance’s eyes reflect the vast pure white beaches, complimenting clear cerulean waters below. Shiro couldn’t wait for them to touch down, for him to get a whiff of the saltwater and feel the sand tickle his toes. He knows well enough that these are things that remind Lance of home. The way he talks about it, Shiro’s sure he couldn’t _live_ if beaches were to go extinct.  
  
He’s so happy for his lover it’s overwhelming him more than it should.  
  
Lance’s eyes widen as he rushes to the window, pressing his face against it cutely as his legs bounce in excitement.  
  
“Is that a _beach?!_ It looks like Earth! The fucking _ocean_ , and the birds and the sand and the trees and—oh! Oh! The waterfalls really _are_ floating?!”  
  
His shouts and exclamations aren’t a distraction in the slightest as Shiro maneuvers his lion through the arcs of rocks, landing safely in the makeshift cave he had found the first few times he’d come here.  
  
With a little assistance from Allura and Coran, he managed to find a planet that was close enough in similarity to Earth. The heat, the oxygen, the water and the beaches were all strikingly similar, so Shiro deemed the planet good enough for them to visit for a day.  
  
“I know you’ve been hurting,” Shiro stands up from his seat, watching as Lance crosses the room towards him excitedly with a wide smile stretching gradually on his face, “so I just wanted to, do _something_ other than hold you and tell you the same thing over and over again like a broken record.”  
  
“Oh, babe…”  
  
“So I thought, _you know_ , let me find you a goddamn beach for a day.”  
  
Tears stream down Lance’s glossy cheeks and Shiro reaches impulsively to wipe them away but he snatches his hand in his, holding tight.  
  
“Stop, baby please stop it’s okay.”  
  
“Do you not like it? Because we can go back—”  
  
“ _Babe,_ ” Lance chuckles tearfully, “relax.”  
  
“What’s up?”  
  
“This, _this_ is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me. I just, I’m _overwhelmed_. You didn’t have to do this. Holding me and telling me everything’s okay suffices as well.”  
  
“But I had the power to do something like this,” Shiro smiles sadly, reaching with his other hand to cradle Lance’s tearful face closer to his, “so I wanted to. For you. You’re my prince, yeah?”  
  
“Yeah,” Lance sighs, letting it all out before leaning up to kiss his lips. He lets them slide for a few moments before pulling away and taking Shiro’s hand firmly.  
  
“Thank you. _I love you_.”  
  
“I love you too, Lance. You ready to go?”  
  
“Yes,” he grins wider, more like the Cheshire Cat as he tugs Shiro toward the bay doors, “guess who’s gonna finally learn how to swim?”  
  
_Shit._  
  
“Never mind! We’re going back!”  
  
“You can’t run away from this!”  
  
And no, Shiro couldn’t. Unless he wanted to lose his other arm. Luckily, Lance is an _extremely_ skilled swimmer and managed to keep him afloat when they eventually treated at the deeper end of the ocean. Since there was oxygen, they were fortunate enough to ditch their clunky headgear and fewer clothes than usual.  
  
It was somewhere in between getting out of the ocean and walking to the bottom of the waterfalls where Shiro learned that Lance was a lifeguard that day. It was yet another piece of him he didn’t know about. Shiro had asked why he was so confident about taking his out in the deep end, and with that inquiry, he was granted an answer that pleased him.  
  
There’s a picture in his mind that still replays as they sit in the sand, basking in the fiery colors of the sunset. It was of Lance, entering the small little opening underneath the waterfall they had chosen to hide in. The water fell from above, down onto his head and cascading onto his tan skin. Light reflected the water, and combined with the reflection of his blue eyes there was an ethereal glow. God-like, almost.  
  
Suddenly every decision Shiro had made regarding the little getaway was worth it. And it still was.  
  
“I haven’t seen a sunset like this in years.”  
  
His voice brings him out of his obvious trance, turning to see the sunlight highlight the less prominent features of his face. To see Lance practically glowing after watching a thundercloud follow him around was a blessing in itself.  
  
“Me neither…”  
  
Comfortable silence resumes, Lance’s hand resting lazily on Shiro’s prosthetic one.  
  
“I’m glad I could see one with you,” Shiro says, out of the blue, but it still evokes a smile from him, eyes sparkling a brighter blue than the water before them as his curls bounce when he turns.  
  
“Cute,” he murmurs, kissing Shiro softly, “so fucking cute.”  
  
Shiro’s heart leaps as he pulls away, tugging him closer.  
  
“Lance.”  
  
The latter’s eyebrows raise at Shiro’s sudden urgency.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I—I _love you_.”  
  
“I love you too babe,” he responds genuinely, the grin never daring to fade, “really, I couldn’t have asked for a better day. That’s how I feel after every day with you. Whether we’re fighting aliens, or we’re laying in your bed watching weird Altean shows, or we’re doing stuff like this. Every day I spend with you is something out of a book, and—oh, my god.”  
  
Lance stops talking abruptly as soon as Shiro shifts all his body weight on one knee.  
  
“Shiro, _what are you_ —”  
  
“I thought about what you said,” he starts, gazes never falling from Lance, who’s starting to tear up for the second time today, “about how we might never return to Earth. How I don’t _know_ all the answers. And you’re right, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t know if any of us will ever see Earth again.”  
  
He pauses, collecting his thoughts as his own eyes start to water and his heart pounds viciously in its cage. Shiro takes a deep breath, fishing the ring he had spent almost two years looking for out of his pocket. Though he planned to do this now, it was certainly in his mind for a long time.  
  
“But I know you. I know Lance McClain, who loves his family and the ocean more than the air he breathes. Lance who would throw himself at danger before the innocent would have to raise a finger to defend themselves. Lance, who has wholeheartedly taken my own burdens and has loved me regardless of what comes with them.”  
  
“Shiro…”  
  
“ _I love you_. I don’t know _anything_ that’s going to happen in the future, and maybe that’s what drove me to want to marry you more. But I want this, I want you for the rest of my life; I _need_ you for the rest of my life. In my arms when I go to sleep and pushing me away when my morning breath is too gross for your tastes in the morning.”  
  
Lance laughs, covering his mouth with a shaking hand as tears slide down past his fingers.  
  
“So yeah, I guess I’m doing this. I don’t care if it’s too soon, or too late. We fucking drive _robotic lions._ Us getting married wouldn’t be the craziest thing.”  
  
“No no,” Lance squeaks, reaching out to caress his cheek, wet with tears of joy, “you’re totally right.”  
  
“So, I mean, will you? Will you marry me?”  
  
And honestly, how could Lance say _no?_  
  
The ring fits perfectly, Shiro’s guess of Lance’s finger size spot on, and for a moment, all their demons had withered away.

**Author's Note:**

> i did say it was a surprise, didn't i?  
> who said i couldn't put in a proposal and a surprise >:3
> 
> thank you for reading and going on this journey with me!  
> you can follow my tumblr [sheith-keef](https://sheith-keef.tumblr.com/) here, and the main page for [shiro loves you baby](https://shirolovesyou-baby.tumblr.com/) here.


End file.
